energy; reducing extractive industries while advancing recycling; drastically reducing waste,
including food waste; drastically reducing the
production of throwaway and rapidly obsolescing
products; abolishing destructive subsidies such
as those that encourage fossil fuel production
and overfishing; and shrinking the production and
consumption of ecologically costly foods, especially animal products. Additionally, in most immediate terms, saving Earth’s remaining biodiversity
requires international willingness to considerably expand terrestrial and marine protected areas,
as well as to institute stricter laws, enforcement,
and surveillance of natural areas so as to protect
species everywhere from the current poaching
epidemic and from unregulated (and often illegal)
industrial fishing.

The size of the human population is not the
only variable stressing Earth. But it is a powerful
force that is also eminently amenable to change,
if the international political will can be mustered.
Scientific willingness to engage with this issue will
contribute to raising public awareness and helping
to shift policies (11, 115). In our efforts to halt the
extinction crisis and to bequeath a biodiverse
planet to future generations, willingness to marshal the resources and deploy proven tactics to
address the population question is crucial.

92. B. Halweil, D. Nierenberg, “Meat and seafood: The global diet’s
most costly ingredients,” in State of the World: Innovations
for a Sustainable Economy (Worldwatch Institute, 2008);
www.worldwatch.org/files/pdf/SOW08_chapter_5.pdf.